{"id":2462,"date":"2016-12-19T21:00:20","date_gmt":"2016-12-19T21:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/?p=2462"},"modified":"2022-04-13T15:57:44","modified_gmt":"2022-04-13T14:57:44","slug":"pythagorean-astronomy-assassin-supernova","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/2016\/12\/19\/pythagorean-astronomy-assassin-supernova\/","title":{"rendered":"Pythagorean Astronomy: Assassin Supernova"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"artist's

Close-up of star near a supermassive black hole (artist\u2019s impression) Image credit: ESO, ESA\/Hubble, M. Kornmesser<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

When is a supernova not a supernova? The brightest supernova on record was discovered in 2015 by the All Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae<\/a> (ASAS-SN). Named ASASSN-15lh, this remarkable event – what looked like a huge brightening of a star in a distant galaxy – was observed by many other telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope<\/a> and the Las Cumbres Observatory<\/a>\u00a0network. With careful study, it became apparent that ASASSN-15lh was not quite what it seemed. Rather than being the explosion of a massive star, it is now thought that it was the final flash as a star was swallowed by a supermassive black hole<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This month, Morgan Fraser<\/a>, from University College Dublin, and Las Cumbres Observatory’s Edward Gomez explain the story of this discovery – and rediscovery! We finish with a brief recap of 2016, and a look forward to 2017.<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/astrog80.astro.cf.ac.uk\/pythagoras-trousers\/mp3\/Dec2016_full_PHYSX.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n

Originally broadcast on 19th December 2016 as part of Pythagoras’ Trousers<\/a> on Radio Cardiff<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When is a supernova not a supernova? The brightest supernova on record was discovered in 2015 by the All Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN). Named ASASSN-15lh, this remarkable event – what looked like a huge brightening of a star in a distant galaxy – was observed by many other telescopes, including the Hubble Space<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":273,"featured_media":2463,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,30,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-astronomy-2","category-media","category-pythagorean-astronomy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4hmOz-DI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/236\/2016\/12\/eso1644a.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/273"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2462"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2465,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2462\/revisions\/2465"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/physicsoutreach\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}